This is an article I felt really passionate about writing.
Christine’s Thriver Story last week, was incredibly synchronistic with this week’s article.
When she stated to me that the greatest thing that she realised from her journey was that she had never been able to feel or know her own worthiness, and that she deserved to ‘take up space’ in life – I resonated powerfully.
Before doing her radio show interview I had just made a post on my Facebook Page “When Sleeping Woman Wake, Mountains Move”. My purpose in this post was exactly about sharing inspiration to help generate worthiness. This post received a lot of comments, shares and likes.
From the response I knew it was an important topic that touched people’s hearts.
I know with my own journey of recovery from narcissistic abuse – especially this second time around – a HUGE part of my recovery was realising just how disconnected I had been from knowing, anchoring into and being able to feel my own worthiness.
I know how many people will be able to relate to feeling inherently unworthy and that was why I really wanted to ‘unearth’ this issue.
I also know that until we get out of old patterns and ‘look back in at ourselves’ we may not have realised just how unworthy we did feel.
This is the paradox in regard to our journey of evolving and developing ourselves – when we are stuck in a way of being that we have been our entire life, we don’t know any better.
In fact it feels ‘normal’ to us.
It isn’t until we really take a stand for what would be good and healthy and right in our lives – and for creating that from the inside out – and take on the efforting of evolving ourselves, that we truly discover the profound difference of who we once were in the face of who we have now become.
My Realisations
In the process of deep inner healing, just like Christine, I realised I was ‘playing small’ and was scared to ‘take up space in life.’
I had a discussion with a girlfriend not long ago about my deep inner revelations regarding ‘worthiness’ and the shifts I had done on myself.
I asked her “Did you always think I felt worthy regarding the work I do for narcissistically abused people?”
Her answer was ”Yes of course. Why do you ask me this?”
I shared with her how I had discovered a HUGE internal belief system that the wounded three-year-old part of Melanie had been holding on to that had sabotaged my chance of feeling ‘worthy’.
This part of myself had decided “No matter what you do or how much you prove yourself you will never be worthy of being loved, you don’t belong and you will never be kept safe”.
So what this meant, in real life terms, was my entire life of achieving some pretty amazing things in many areas of my life, throughout my life, weren’t providing me with any feelings of ‘worthiness’.
The three-year-old within me simply did what she did, felt passionate about ‘creating’, yet did not believe that this ‘earnt’ her ‘love’, ‘safety’ or ‘belonging’.
All of these three things are the fundamental aspects of feeling worthy and secure in life.
My friend, who is very spiritually aware understood. She said “That makes so much sense as to why you never talk about what you do when we meet people, you always talk about what other people do but you don’t put your best foot forward for yourself. In fact if people ask you what you do you choke”.
She admitted that had always surprised her and indeed frustrated her, how I became unconformable when the spotlight was turned on to me. She said she had often wondered why I was ‘hiding’.
This was very true. I had always wanted to hide under a rock when people asked me what I do. I never drew attention to myself out in public. I much preferred to live ‘under the radar’. I certainly did not talk about my mission openly with family (apart from my son), friends or acquaintances.
I know that when I was still holding this painful inner belief, I was thrilled on a heart-felt level for people I could help, and felt very passionate about being able to make a significant difference in people’s lives – yet I was really struggling to assign any of my own ‘worthiness’ to it.
I have always seen myself as very humble, not needing accolades or recognition. I have always had the belief “If you are good at something you don’t need to broadcast it” – but truly my shrinking back was not to do with that, even though I thought it was.
It was a deep belief that I didn’t deserve to take up space in the world, and that if I did put myself out there and ‘shine’ what would be the use anyway.
The real truth was I had no idea how to feel a deep abiding appreciation for Who I Was or What I Did.
Until I found and shifted this deep inner belief I had no idea what the difference was between feeling ‘unworthy’ and ‘worthy’.
It wasn’t until I deeply named and claimed that belief (as well as many others on this topic), found its origins and shifted it out with Quanta Freedom Healing, that I was able to open up the space to truly anchor into and feel my inherent True Self worthiness.
The difference is exceptional.
It is so (words can’t really express – ‘wonderful’ is an understatement) WOW to now feel what it is to deeply connect to my inner being’s feelings of worthiness and deep appreciation for Who I Am.
How Lack of Worthiness Relates to Being Abused
I know I am not alone in this.
I know that so many of us who have been narcissistically abused feel nebular – we feel invisible. We feel like other people are allowed to take up space in life and we aren’t.
Is it any wonder that we attracted narcissists who have to take up space, who have to be the centre of attention. Narcissists grab the limelight continuously in order to garnish narcissistic supply (attention and energy) and are deeply resentful when they believe they can’t or don’t have it.
If they perceive we did then they would do all they could to rip that down.
We so easily moved over and shrunk ourselves back no matter who we were, or what we are doing in life, played small, and hid who we were and let the narcissist take over.
And of course we just kept doing what we do in the background. Assisting all we could, pulling our weight considerably and kept the show going, the wheels turning, and attempted to produce enough to keep the narcissist’s dishevelled life intact. How often did so many of us do what was necessary to bail out the narcissist from his or her rash decisions and mistakes?
The irony is for many co-dependents, other people (apart from the narcissist) recognised our abilities and achievements, but yet we couldn’t feel them.
Of course the narcissist in the idealising phase of the relationship ‘glowed’ this recognition back to us, yet in the devaluing phases did all she or he could to find fault with us and declare whatever we did or didn’t do was never good enough.
The Connection Between Shame and Unworthiness
Earlier this year I wrote an article on shame. You can read about it here.
Our greatest barrier to feeling and knowing our own worthiness is shame. When there is an inner part of us that is holding shame, we don’t feel worthy of love and belonging.
I know how many parts of myself did not feel worthy in claiming my divine and rightful place in life. It was these inner parts which were responsible for my fear and hiding and not wanting to be exposed.
Fortunately my now evolving inner parts who are releasing the shame and fear, and are claiming the energy from my higher self, Source and my loving internal parent know that they do have the right to take up space and be seen in life.
Becoming this new way of being is still a work in progress – but truly it is now expanding beautifully, whereas before I was stuck.
I had to work at it. I had to shift my inner consciousness to achieve that flow forward into liberation.
When we shift out of an injured and undeveloped part of ourselves, we claim the energy of being healthy on that topic. Being ‘normal’ and knowing it is our right to show oneself and shine, and feel happy to be who we are.
That is truly our natural state of being, and anything else is unnatural.
Our worthiness is such an important buffer against being abused. We naturally gravitate to and attract much healthier people and situations, and we are anchored enough in our own worthiness, our own solid sense of self, that we no longer accept being diminished and abused as acceptable.
Truly it is the shameful, fearful and limited parts of ourselves that allow the pain to happen.
The Match of Unworthiness to the Narcissist’s Shame
It is truly fascinating when we identify the matches we are unconsciously playing out with narcissists. It really allows us to understand in greater detail why we attracted and sustained relationships with narcissists.
Narcissists feel intense inner shame. They disown their shameful, scared, hurt and damaged inner parts and are generating and navigating their life from their internal centre of the inner wounded child.
It is not ‘worthiness’ which propels a narcissist to take up space. It is fear and pain. ‘I need to take energy by manipulation, charm or force, because I am desperate to try to avoid these shameful, screaming inner parts’.
These parts of the narcissist are under-developed, immature and unevolved, and can’t relate to relationship in a healthy adult way.
The parts of ourselves that are scared to take up space and resist shining as our true radiant selves, are also fearful and disowned ‘young’ parts that have never been healed.
Narcissists and co-dependents are holding shame and pain from childhoods.
Many people may proclaim that they had ‘a great childhood’, and even if this was how you defined your childhood, it is really important to understand that as a child you were primarily in delta and theta brainwaves up to around 7 years of age.
This was the time where you received most of your programming about relationship, yourself, others and life.
From this foundation ‘what happened’ was absorbed directly into your subconscious without the ability for you to have any logical reasoning around it. Your cognitive mind was not developed. It couldn’t assess anything as “That is your stuff and has nothing to do with me and my worthiness”.
As children if we did not receive the repeat messages of our own worthiness, (the knowing that we are loved, secure and belong simply for being ourselves) we had no ability to self-generate worthiness.
What was likely to be absorbed was: emotionally charged messages received from someone else’s lack of worthiness.
We could not anchor into self-worthiness when viewing and experiencing people who did not have their own sense of love, safety or belonging secured.
Many people experienced emotionally painful, traumatic and even highly neglectful childhoods. This is the case with most narcissists – that the establishing of a False Self was a defensive mechanism to try to offset the deep pain of unworthiness and shame which was generated from significant abuse.
Even if you did not endure a highly traumatic childhood, it is important to understand that children perceive events emotionally. It is from the emotional perception of events that we establish painful and deeply ingrained belief systems – especially if the events / messages are repeated – which they generally are.
Our parent’s patterns were ingrained belief systems that kept their behaviour and ways of relating to life in repeat.
In my case, another child may have emotionally responded differently to what my environment created. Most definitely I was brought up by a mother who also struggled to ‘be seen and shine’. She played small in her life regardless of the fact that she was incredibly capable and resourceful. I was also brought up with strict standards in order to be ‘enough’ or ‘earn approval’. I certainly did not experience significant trauma, neglect or abuse.
My own emotional ‘signature’ coupled with my childhood conditions led to co-dependency and absolutely deep ingrained feelings of unworthiness.
The deeper truth is: it was these undeveloped parts of myself that created struggles in relationship with myself, life and others that led me to taking the necessary responsibility to evolve these parts.
Hence the narcissistic relationships – the biggest wake-up-call we could ever possibly co-create for ourselves.
What becomes really important for all of us is to not get stuck in the story.
We could all talk about and write about what happened to us, join on-line groups and keep living stuck in the ‘reasons’ for the rest of our life.
That is not what making the effort to heal these parts and evolve ourselves is all about.
The truth is it really doesn’t matter how our limiting beliefs happened, and certainly blaming other people and our life is not going to assist us in creating new and different life realities.
We have to want to transform ourselves and we need to deeply go into ourselves find, claim and name our wounds in order to shift them. If we just leave our belief systems operating unconsciously then they run our life by remote.
I watched a Bruce Lipton (a good friend of Joe Dispenza’a) DVD – Nature, Nurture and The Power of Love – The Biology of Conscious Parenting the other night. It is fascinating. I highly recommend getting this DVD if you have not already watched it.
It was all about how belief systems are formed – from scientific quantifiable research, and how the fearful ones contract our bodies, contract our life and contract our growth.
This scientific evidence proves beyond doubt the effect belief systems have within our subconscious mind, which drives our life, and how if we don’t effort to shift our consciousness how our life circumstances don’t change.
If we are contracted down into fearful, young and limiting beliefs – we are dissolving – we are de-evolving. We are not growing, expanding or evolving. We are heading for dis-ease, which is the total opposite of ‘ease’ of living.
We dis-integrate rather than integrate.
Dis-ease starts as emotional pain and life breakdowns, and then if necessary infiltrates our physical apparatus to really get our attention.
It may appear that ‘the outside’ is creating our disappointment, upheavals and is what sabotages our happiness, but truly it is our inner programs which are responsible for the attraction, co-creation and how we show up in life that supplements our painful experiences.
Therefore totally In regard to our lack of worthiness, waiting for something outside of us to fix these issues is not the answer.
Locating Your Unworthiness
This I would love people to understand much more than what the general self-development industry allows people to understand.
If you don’t claim, and name your limiting beliefs you have no ability to shift them.
What does this really mean?
It means finding ‘reasons’ is not enough.
It means self-avoidance will never allow you to graduate to evolve your life.
It means covering up, hiding over and looking to the outside world to fix your pain for you doesn’t work.
It means pretending to be ‘’perfect’ and living behind a mask is a sure-fire way to keep the pain going.
It means you need to go inwards with an incredible honest self-inventory, and be prepared to get real and vulnerable with yourself.
The truth sets you free – it is that simple. In order to access the truth about anything in your life experience all begins with becoming very real with yourself.
Unless we make the unconscious conscious we don’t step up into freedom, relief and the light. We stay stuck in the darkness.
There are literally thousands of topics that you could evolve your life on, but for the sake of this article you can feel into ‘how you show up in life’.
Were you like Christine and myself, and scared of taking up space and shining?
Do you present yourself in life as a front of ‘shining’ and ‘being noticed’ yet underneath that you really feel small and unworthy?
To work out what is in your inner programming that is driving that, you need to feel into the emotion of feeling small and unworthy.
Then as you feel it, ask yourself “Where in my body am I holding this painful feeling?”
Then ask yourself “What chronological age is the part of me that is holding it?”
We need to understand that our wounded parts are young, they are the immature parts who do not know they can generate their own solidness, connectedness and wholeness.
It is not until we evolve these inner parts that they can.
Now feel into that young, fearful part of yourself and ask “What is this about?”
If you have deeply connected with yourself with the intention of love and support and healing this part of yourself you will receive your answer.
This is very important to understand – if you are blaming and self-rejecting yourself, and beating yourself up with criticism and self-recriminations, the inner child part of you is not going to trust you, connect to you and supply you with any information.
The young part of you will pull away, stay hurt and keep subconsciously sabotaging your life.
In order to evolve, your intention MUST be about deeply loving, partnering, standing for yourself, supporting and healing yourself, because nothing else will suffice.
Then it takes the commitment to heal this part and create the adult version of safety, love and solidness with it. Then you will start progressing into your true birthright of worthiness.
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